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Web Reading: Bye-Bye Belly Fat?

Those of us who do most of our reading online have resigned ourselves to the cartoon distillations of our neuroses and desires which follow us through much of the Web in a seemingly permanent sidebar, promising whiter teeth, better credit scores, and more erect erections. And who could forget our truest daily companion: fat, especially in the stomach region, that glut of swelling guts, oozing over waistbands and often carrying the ominous tagline “Obey,” as if Shepard Fairey were now in the weight-loss game.

These ubiquitous ads, known as “remnants,” are parts of inexpensive packages sold to sites as fillers for unsold space by a range of third-party ad networks. (Google AdSense, a free program, also packages such ads.) Yet there may be some relief in store from this noisome world of carnival barkers. The Times reported this week that as ad revenue has rebounded from its darkest days, several publishers, including CBS Interactive and Forbes.com, are taking direct control of their remnants sales. So will we see better ads along the periphery of our screens?

Maybe, if publishers can sell that space to more upmarket clients. One model that the story points to is Weather.com, which cut out third parties and created its own ad-sales network last year, called (in what seems like questionable taste) “Category 5.” (Cut to a marketing meeting with a wind machine, fake lightning, and a hurricane of sales.) Yet my daily visits to the site, especially essential this winter, still occasion the appearance of familiar attractions in the cheap-Web-ad stable: The Juggling Refinancer (lower your payments), The Headless Muscular Red Torso (cut out the fat), and (everybody’s favorite) Constipated, Beady-Eyed Old Mortgage Man (enter your age and calculate your new house payment, or just run in terror). Weather.com is also selling other, better ads, but the filler remains.

Checking the latest forecast isn’t the same as reading a serious piece of journalism or criticism, but fat bellies and their ilk follow me, it seems, wherever I look. Adjacent to Laura Miller’s criticism and essays at Salon: A click-your-age auto insurance ad with four identical images of a regal silver-fox gentleman, and, down at the bottom of the page, a belly ad. Book reviews in the Los Angeles Times: “How to build muscle fast” and “Who Gets to Use Unused Cruise Cabins at a Huge Discount.” Literary coverage at the Washington Post: “Joint discomfort Warning,” “SHOCKING Muscle Photos,” and “Why Snoring Can Kill.”

Advertising and publishing have always been closely linked, and mostly to good effect. And people have been reading columns of text alongside an assortment of odd and occasionally disagreeable ads for hundreds of years. Part of the fun of reading old magazines and newspapers is to marvel at all the advertising oddities hidden within those musty pages.

Yet as the Web continues to emerge as a medium for reading, it often grapples with issues of seriousness and taste. If we were only reading piffle about fake celebrities or publicity releases masquerading as reporting, then we’d have less reason to mind being bombarded by these ungrammatical, crass, and craven mockeries. But there is an ever-growing amount of good writing online, much of which suffers from its proximity to these low-rent neighbors.

Maybe most people block out these remnant ads, and that good writing jumps off screens as it has long done off pages. But as advertising models for e-books are beginning to emerge, the notion of protecting visual space for reading seems more important than ever. The day may be coming, after all, when you’ll be encouraged to take a break from “Middlemarch” to visit your sexy cartoon friends at the “Fat Burning Furnace.”

Ian Crouch is a contributing writer and producer for newyorker.com. He lives in Maine.